John Updike quotes

Dreams come true; without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them. (John Updike)
America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy. View quote
John Updike
An affair wants to spill, to share its glory with the world. No act is so private it does not seek applause. View quote
John Updike
Until the 20th century it was generally assumed that a writer had said what he had to say in his works. View quote
John Updike
Every marriage tends to consist of an aristocrat and a peasant. Of a teacher and a learner. View quote
John Updike
There's a crystallization that goes on in a poem which the young man can bring off, but which the middle-aged man can't. View quote
John Updike
Each morning my characters greet me with misty faces willing, though chilled, to muster for another day's progress through the dazzling quicksand the marsh of blank paper. View quote
John Updike
Existence itself does not feel horrible; it feels like an ecstasy, rather, which we have only to be still to experience. View quote
John Updike
Sex is like money; only too much is enough. View quote
John Updike
We do survive every moment, after all, except the last one. View quote
John Updike
What art offers is space - a certain breathing room for the spirit. (John Updike)
Writers may be disreputable, incorrigible, early to decay or late to bloom but they dare to go it alone. View quote
John Updike
A leader is one who, out of madness or goodness, volunteers to take upon himself the woe of the people. There are few men so foolish, hence the erratic quality of leadership in the world. View quote
John Updike
That a marriage ends is less than ideal; but all things end under heaven, and if temporality is held to be invalidating, then nothing real succeeds. View quote
John Updike
If men do not keep on speaking terms with children, they cease to be men, and become merely machines for eating and for earning money. View quote
John Updike
Now that I am sixty, I see why the idea of elder wisdom has passed from currency. View quote
John Updike
By the time a partnership dissolves, it has dissolved. View quote
John Updike
The essential self is innocent, and when it tastes its own innocence knows that it lives for ever. View quote
John Updike
Being naked approaches being revolutionary; going barefoot is mere populism. View quote
John Updike
From infancy on, we are all spies; the shame is not this but that the secrets to be discovered are so paltry and few. View quote
John Updike
Customs and convictions change; respectable people are the last to know, or to admit, the change, and the ones most offended by fresh reflections of the facts in the mirror of art. (John Updike)
Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea. View quote
John Updike
The inner spaces that a good story lets us enter are the old apartments of religion. View quote
John Updike
The first breath of adultery is the freest; after it, constraints aping marriage develop. View quote
John Updike
I love my government not least for the extent to which it leaves me alone. View quote
John Updike